


i build bridges with these hands

by alderations



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Complicated Relationships, Dissociation, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Trauma, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28267518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alderations/pseuds/alderations
Summary: The body inside the airlock isn’t Carmilla or Nastya, nor is it Ivy or Ashes or even the weird singing mannequin that keeps showing up uninvited. It’s a man, haphazardly strapped into something halfway between a life pod and a coffin, and as Jonny’s feet carry him forward of their own accord, he soaks in the few details visible through the tiny porthole.
Relationships: Drumbot Brian & Jonny d'Ville
Comments: 18
Kudos: 88





	i build bridges with these hands

Aurora has been beeping incessantly for half an hour when Jonny gets fed up at last and takes off for the airlock. Usually, the beeping means that they have a surprise on the way—an enemy boarding party, perhaps, or just some unexpected mail, but even if she doesn’t have a reason for the obnoxious noise, he can just throw himself into the vacuum of space to escape it. It’s a win-win situation, he figures. “Open this door, you blasted machine,” he shouts at the ceiling once he arrives at his destination and finds the inner airlock door firmly shut.

**Depressurizing. Forty seconds remain.**

“Depressurizing  _ what?”  _ Jonny snarls, throwing his hands out wide. “Did the Doctor finally do me a favor and toss herself into the void, or have you and Nastya started hosting your orgies in space?”

No response from Aurora, which doesn’t surprise him. The ship keeps to herself these days, apart from Nastya, and his berating doesn’t help. So Jonny just kicks the door a few times, nearly breaks a toe, and then curses under his breath for the remaining seconds, until the door slides open in front of him, and suddenly he no longer knows how to breathe.

The body inside the airlock isn’t Carmilla or Nastya, nor is it Ivy or Ashes or even the weird singing mannequin that keeps showing up uninvited. It’s a man, haphazardly strapped into something halfway between a life pod and a coffin, and as Jonny’s feet carry him forward of their own accord, he soaks in the few details visible through the tiny porthole. Reddish hair falls in dainty ringlets past his shoulders, where it meets a thick beard on a face that must once have been soft. Jonny fumbles with the lid of the pod for a moment before it hisses open on its own, as if detecting that it’s no longer floating through space.

Inside, the sight is almost too much for Jonny to take in. The man’s strong nose and gentle lips are smothered with frost, his eyelashes stuck together by flecks of ice, but that hardly registers compared to the gruesome spectacle of his torso. He wears a threadbare linen shirt that might have fallen from his emaciated shoulders, if it weren’t for the half-dozen steel arrows embedded in his flesh. Black crystals of old, frozen blood stain his clothes, and underneath them, Jonny can see fingers of frost overlapping the edges of the cruel purple bruises radiating from his wounds.

He’s got to be dead. Even if the arrows weren’t enough to do it, they’ve clearly been stuck in there for a while, and all of that isn’t to mention that he’s practically a block of ice. But before Jonny can decide how to deal with this situation, the familiar  _ click  _ of a cane against the airlock floor startles him out of his… staring.

“Ah,” says Carmilla. “I’ve been waiting for this one.”

Jonny whirls around, stepping back so he’s no longer between the Doctor and the pod. “Waiting? Did—did you fucking  _ order  _ an entire  _ man?” _

She laughs to herself and shakes her head, as if she’s telling a joke that Jonny doesn’t understand. “All in good time. Help me get him to the lab.”

At once, Jonny’s limbs lock up and he’s frozen in place, slack-jawed and speechless as Carmilla approaches the pod and reaches in to brush the brittle hair from the man’s face. “N-no—not again,” he hisses at last.

“That wasn’t a suggestion, Jonny.”

Her voice is soft, almost reminiscent of the way she would soothe his nightmares when it was just the two of them, but her words are enough to push him into action. The pod, conveniently, has wheels on the bottom, almost like a fucked-up vending machine, which is a relief given that he knows the Doctor’s arms would give out before they got through the airlock door if she tried to carry it with him. So he pushes it alone, ignoring the stabs of void-chilled pain that radiate through his hands at every point of contact. Carmilla ushers him out of the lab as soon as he’s done his job.

Jonny drags himself away from the locked doors and does everything in his power to stay distracted until she’s done.

Four days later, as Ashes sweeps the floor with Jonny in a game of blackjack, Carmilla rolls into the room followed by a golden figure nearly seven feet tall and twice as broad as herself. “This,” she says, hardly waiting for them to look up, “is Drumbot Brian. He will be our new pilot, pending some adjustments to his mechanism. Play nice.”

“Aurora doesn’t need a  _ pilot,”  _ Nastya protests from where she’s dangling from a vent in the ceiling.

Carmilla presses her lips together in a way that makes her look truly exhausted, just for a moment. “How many times have you had to talk her out of orbiting upside down in the past month?”

“Six. Don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Suit yourself,” the Doctor sighs, turning back to the table. “Jonny, you look like you’ve been electrocuted. What’s wrong?”

It takes Jonny several seconds to realize that Carmilla’s even addressing him, because his mouth has gone completely dry as his last remaining brain function grinds to a halt. The man—the  _ robot— _ before him is the same one from the pod, but taller, thicker, his beard restored in copper wire and his fingers curling nervously around the brim of a black silk hat. He’s the most jaw-droppingly beautiful person Jonny has ever seen. “Um,” is all he manages, until the man turns his head a few degrees to study him. “I. Er. Sorry. I’m. Nice to—you’re—not dead? You’re not dead. That seems. Good.”

“Useless,” Ivy mutters into her book. Ashes elbows her, but they’re smiling, clearly entertained by Jonny’s fumbling.

Carmilla, on the other hand, looks ready to sink through her wheelchair and into the floor. “I’m… not going to ask. I know the addition of a new crew member is never a  _ simple  _ affair, but I would request that you all take it easy on Brian, at least for the time being. He’s been through a lot.”

At that comment, Brian’s face shifts for the first time, his hooded eyes twitching with some unknown emotion. The way the metal moves ought to be uncanny, but Jonny just wants to run his fingers across every plane and seam until it’s all mapped into the back of his mind. “Will do,” he mumbles, which is apparently enough for Carmilla, as she turns and wheels herself out of the room before she can witness any more havoc.

The Drumbot just stands in the doorway and stares.

By the time Jonny breaks his gaze away from Brian and turns back to the game, Ashes has shuffled the deck in their hands at least fifteen times, and they appear to be debating whether to put their cigarette out on his face. “Aurora to d’Ville,” they tease, dealing the next hand with a few practiced flicks of their fingers. “I think we’ve finally found your type.”

“I do  _ not  _ have—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jonny spits as he picks up his cards and shields his blushing face. A quick glance at the doorway tells him that Brian hasn’t moved. In all honesty, he’s starting to wonder if the man is in there at all, or if he’s some sort of walking surveillance system for Carmilla. Not that she  _ wants  _ to know what they get up to most of the time, especially given Nastya and, well, everything about her. Jonny grimaces at the thought. “I was there when Aurora sucked him in from space,” he murmurs, low enough so only Ashes and Ivy can hear. “The guy was chock-full of arrows. Some sorta botched execution, I bet.”

Ivy looks up from her book. “Juicy.”

“You could just  _ ask  _ him, you know,” Ashes deadpans.

That crossed Jonny’s mind, but even he knows better. “I’m pretty sure ‘invasive questions about very recent trauma’ might be  _ worse  _ than unnecessary murder, at least in M—Carmilla’s eyes.”

“Fair.”

The next time Jonny looks to the doorway, the Drumbot is gone, leaving the four of them alone with their blackjack and books and pointless squabbles.

It takes another week for him to relocate their supposed pilot. Jonny’s not even looking, not really, just wandering the hallways for no particular reason and shooting anything that moves, as is his wont. The creepy mannequin has offered him tea six times, and while it  _ looks  _ like actual tea, he doesn’t trust it. Worse still, Carmilla seems strangely enamored with the damn thing and its unnerving moustache. All that being said, when he turns a corner and finds a metal figure slumped at the edge of the hallway, he nearly shoots it, staying his own hand just in the nick of time when he realizes that it’s Brian.

Brian who, apparently, can cry. Soft, heaving sobs wrack his solid form, though they look more like uncontrollable tremors as Jonny draws closer and drops to his knees. Through the metal fingers that claw at Brian’s face, Jonny can see his eyes as vacant and still as they were when he was just a frozen hunk of flesh. “Brian,” he murmurs, reaching out a hand but hesitating before he can make contact. “Hey. C’mon.”

The robot doesn’t show any sign of noticing him. Even when Jonny hedges his bets and shakes him by the shoulder, Brian doesn’t move. “It’s okay,” he continues, which is patently false, but the Drumbot doesn’t need to know that yet. “You’re on the—the Aurora. You’re safe here. Brian?”

Slowly, shakily, Brian looks up from between his fingers, and Jonny sees his metallic pupils constrict as he focuses in on the present. “I… what?”

Jonny lets go of his shoulder and sits back on his haunches. “Are you with me?”

“I—I think so,” Brian mumbles. “I don’t know, um, where I am or what’s—who’s—”

Now that Jonny thinks of it, their introduction was rather one-sided. “It’s alright,” he reassures before Brian can spiral any further. “Sorry, I didn’t realize that, y’know, Carmilla didn’t tell you who we all… are. I’m Jonny. d’Ville. First mate.”

Brian drops his hands from his face, which Jonny takes as a good sign, though he just looks mildly alarmed when he takes in Jonny’s entire face. That’s to be expected. “So you’re her—the Doctor’s second-in-command, or…?”

_ “Ha.”  _ It comes out louder than he intends, and Jonny raises his hands placatingly when Brian jumps. “I’ve mutinied, like, fifteen times. Just doesn’t stick. I’m not gonna tattle to her every time you so much as breathe, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

That does seem to relax Brian a bit, though he hasn’t stopped shaking, and Jonny watches as his eyes focus and unfocus as if he’s drifting in and out of reality. “Good to know,” he mumbles after a minute, his voice floaty and absent.

“Brian. I’m losing you again. Is there… uh, can I do anything? To help, I guess? You keep, like, floating away.”

As if moving through half-dried cement, Brian drags his eyes back up to Jonny’s and leans forward, just a few inches. His lip wobbles. “I don’t feel like I’m  _ here,”  _ he admits after a minute. A few iridescent tears slide down his cheeks, and Jonny has to focus on keeping his face neutral despite his shock. Carmilla must have made some serious progress in her research, if she can make a robot that cries. “I’m still in space. You—you’re all—everything is going to fade away, and I’ll be alone again. Freezing.”

“You were out there for a  _ very  _ long time, as far as I could tell,” Jonny responds. He’s not good at being gentle like this, but he can channel the tenderness that Nastya and Ashes have shown him on the rare occasion that he needs it. “Can I, um, touch you? It might help. Keep you grounded, y’know.”

Brian nods and holds out a hand, which Jonny takes between his own as if it’s the only thing tethering Brian to reality, which it might be. To his surprise, Brian’s palms are lined with a soft layer of black silicone, which makes them feel  _ almost  _ human as Jonny traces every crease and curve of his fingers. Why would Carmilla give him hands like this, if not—well. He’ll be good at playing instruments. “Drumbot,” he mutters, fighting to keep a scowl off his face.

“I don’t know why she called me that,” Brian mumbles.

“Yeah. Well. She’s been looking for a drummer for a while.” Jonny looks down at the hand in his and swallows thickly. “And by ‘looking,’ I do mean ‘trying to build.’”

Disoriented fear flashes across Brian’s face, and he hunches into himself a bit. “Build? Am—I’m not even real, am I? I remember something, but—but—who—”

“No no no,” Jonny cuts him off. “You’re real! I promise! I saw you, when you first got here. All flesh and bone and full of arrows. She’s never… we all have something replaced, a Mechanism, but she’s never remade, like, a whole person before. But you still look like yourself. I swear.”

At the mention of the arrows, Brian flinches, his face crumpling. “I still have my heart, supposedly,” he replies. “I—I don’t—I don’t want to be here. But they—I—c-can’t…”

“We match,” is all Jonny extracts from that statement. “Mine is  _ just  _ my heart. Or, well, we’re opposites, I guess.”

That doesn’t seem to comfort Brian at all, and he pulls his hand back to himself, tucking his face into his arms and heaving with a fresh wave of sobs.  _ Fuck,  _ Jonny messed up. Now that he thinks of it, he’s shocked that it took this long for him to say something stupid, but he doesn’t feel any  _ better  _ about the gorgeous robot crying in a ball in front of him. “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—it’s okay,” he tries, biting his lip when Brian doesn’t react. “Do you… want company, or…?”

“Please stay,” Brian whimpers through his sleeve.

So Jonny sits next to him, a few tense inches apart, and listens to Brian’s sobs until they wind down into sniffles. This is the most time and effort that he’s put into comforting another human in a few centuries, at least, and the longer he sits there, the more nervous energy buzzes through his limbs and threatens to burst from his mouth in words that will undoubtedly be harmful. Thankfully, before he can say anything too dumb, Brian drags himself to his feet, announcing that he needs to go back to his room and recharge. Jonny’s not sure whether he means that literally.

As soon as the robot is gone, Jonny resolves to shoot as many inanimate objects as it takes to forcibly excise the new emotions that have apparently manifested in his head.

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on a [tumblr post](https://horngryeyes.tumblr.com/post/638220617572909056/horngryeyes-how-i-feel-when-talking-about-brian) by user horngryeyes because I saw all those paintings of St. Sebastian and couldn't control myself :')
> 
> I had slid just the slightest bit out of my usual 2 of Hearts brainrot and then I thought about them being, like, awkward bumbling new boyfriends when Brian is first mechanized, and I've gone completely bananas. This is all I can think about. of course it's gonna take a while for Jonny to be less of a dipshit and more of an Accessible Human Person, at least to Brian. Regardless. I am here to project :)
> 
> pls leave comments if you are so inclined, they really make my day!!! I love u all take care of urselves <3 title is from Big Houses by Squalloscope which is big 2oH vibes


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